It’s Medicare’s Birthday and We’ll Campaign If We Want To

Medicare is likely to be the Dems' biggest issue this cycle. Photo: Express-Times.

It’s Medicare’s 47th birthday, and Democratic candidates and committees are bringing out the cake…and the knives.

Democratic candidates and committees smacked their Republican counterparts across Pennsylvania Monday for their votes in favor of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget. The controversial plan would make Medicare more like a voucher system.

This is likely to be the Dems’ single biggest issue in House and Senate races nationwide. In PA, a state with a large number of senior citizens, the issue has been a contentious point among House candidates – including PA-12, where Rep. Mark Critz (D-Cambria) and Republican Keith Rothfus have both campaigned on the issue.

“If Keith Rothfus gets his way, Medicare’s 47th anniversary would be its last because his plan would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, costing seniors more than $6,000 per year in additional out of pocket health care costs,” Critz’s Spokesman Mike Mikus said in a press release.

Since the primary, Rothfus has attacked Critz for supporting President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act, a law his campaign says removes funding for Medicare to fund the universal healthcare plan (though the Ryan plan maintains those cuts).

Further, Ryan and supporters of his plan note that Medicare as it’s structured now is headed straight for bankruptcy in the coming decades. By and large, Democrats have not avoided putting pen to paper on a comprehensive plan to pay for the program in the long term. It’s unlikely that a person turning 47 today could count on the program at current funding levels.

Taking a more creative path, Credo SuperPAC, an organization opposing Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Bucks), announced plans to deliver a cake to his district office in Langhorne this afternoon along with a card that read, “Cut Cake, Not Medicare. Love, Seniors Against Fitzpatrick”.

Democrat George Badey joined the theme by accusing his opponent, Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Delaware) of breaking a 2010 campaign promise of not voting to end Medicare by supporting Ryan’s budget.

Earlier this morning, he hosted a press conference with historian Alice Hoffman, whose father, Nelson Cruikshank, helped craft the original Medicare system, at the Courthouse in Media.

The folly of the republican plan is that it grandfathers those 55 and over…till they die…so who do those 20 and up think will be paying the whole bill for those over 55 and themselves. Do you have any idea how many over 55 we are talking about and how many years it will take till the last one dies and the grandfather law passes into oblivion? Do you have any idea what it will cost to pay for those vouchers and my Medicare which is pay as you go? Think about it.

Medicare will end to exist “as we know it” if we do nothing because it will go bankrupt. I am glad that the Republican ideas do not touch Medicare for those over 55 but plan changes so that it will continue to exist for those younger, like me.

WHY DOES KEITH THE CANDIDATE ROTHFUS SUPPORT THE DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF WESTERN PA SENIORS? IS IT BECAUSE THIS FORMER BELTWAY FEMA OFFICIAL WANTS TO FORCE FEED THESE VOICELESS SENIORS RYAN PLAN VOUCHERS! MR. ROTHFUS IN YOUR HEART YOU KNOW IT’S WRONG TO DENY SENIORS THE RIGHT TO VOTE!